First-day jitters, social distancing
Germantown, Collierville schools get used to new protocols, rules
GERMANTOWN — Student work still fills the walls of the art room in Germantown’s Houston High, but on the first day back this fall, students filled only a handful of desks.
The six donned masks and spaced out to the teacher’s center and left, reviewing the year’s Art II syllabus on their laptops. Blue tape X’s marked out the desks in between them. High schoolers in the Germantown Municipal School District are on a hybrid plan, coming into the classrooms two days a week and learning remotely for three.
“So this has, again, my name and my email. So I’m sure we’ll be communicating a lot this year via email,” the teacher, Amanda Schulter, told the class.
At Houston High, just over 20% of the school’s 2,000 students decided to go virtual only, meaning that roughly 40% of the student body is in the building at any given time, school leaders said Monday. Kate Crowder, spokesperson for the district, said most rooms have about a dozen students for each class, though some, like a computer science class, had just four. Those students sat one to a table, surrounded by 24 monitors not used.
Like Germantown, Collierville also implemented a hybrid plan for its older students. The two districts returned Monday for the first time since closing in March as the COVID-19 pandemic spread through Shelby County. Arlington and Bartlett’s districts also returned Monday, along with neighboring Desoto County Schools in Mississippi. Shelby County’s Lakeland and Millington districts returned Aug. 10. Shelby County Schools, by far the largest district in the county, will resume virtually Aug. 31.
To the knowledge of Germantown and Collierville’s district superintendents, no one missed the first day back due to being in isolation with COVID-19 or quarantined as a precaution after potential exposure, each said Monday morning. So far, Collierville has reported three cases among athletes and one case among an employee, according to news reports.
“Well, it’s different than years past — obviously we’ve got social distancing in place, masks — but there’s still first-day jitters, they’re still excited to be here, they’re still students trying to find their way to their first classes,” said Jason Manuel, superintendent in Germantown, “but it’s nice to be back in the building with kids and teachers.”
For him, a successful first week will mean that students and staff have returned and “retrained” their habits to include the school’s new COVID-19 safety protocols. Recently, the district slightly modified its reopening language to “require” masks of students instead of “strongly recommending” them, and Monday morning, students had so far been compliant with the update.
In Germantown’s plan, grades 7-12 are on the hybrid plan and grades K-6 are able to learn in person five days weekly. Roughly a quarter of the district’s 6,100 students opted to learn completely virtually.
Similarly, Collierville began with a plan for in-person instruction for each day of the week for all students but had to transition the district to a hybrid schedule late in July in order to accommodate the 6 feet of social distancing recommended by the Shelby County Health Department. (The district had made its plan around American Academy of Pediatrics guidance, which called for 3 feet of social distancing.) Many parents protested in response.
About 36% of the district’s 9,000 students are virtual only, a population that increased after the district announced the move to the hybrid schedule. Because fewer students would be returning in person, the district had space to accommodate elementary school students in person five days each week, Gary Lilly, superintendent of the district, said Monday.
“The first week of school is always an exciting time. There are usually things you have to work out and establish for students and staff so that everyone gets into a routine,” Lilly said. “Certainly there are far more things that have to get worked out this year than usual because there’s a whole different set of protocols and procedures.”